


Troubled Mind

by allofspace



Series: Fade to Black [4]
Category: Vengeful - V.E. Schwab, Vicious - V.E. Schwab, Villains Series - V. E. Schwab
Genre: Canon Compliant, Character Death Fix, Implied/Referenced Character Death, M/M, SPOILERS FOR VENGEFUL
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-06
Updated: 2019-02-06
Packaged: 2019-10-23 10:20:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,900
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17681603
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/allofspace/pseuds/allofspace
Summary: This is set soon after vengeful. WARNING: SPOILERS FOR VENGEFUL. Based on "troubled mind" by Dan Mangan.When Eli wakes up, it’s dark. He wonders if he’s truly awake at all. He can’t feel his limbs, he can’t remember anything. Suddenly, he realizes he’s cold. His body is stuff, but is able to move an arm and feel around, and realizes he’s in a small metal box, lying on a metal tray. He’s in a morgue, or something like it.





	Troubled Mind

**Author's Note:**

> This is part of an ongoing series of short fics set in different universes, all inspired by a playlist of songs that made me think of Eli/Victor. I am open to continuing some or all of them! Let me know which ones you enjoy!

_“And it won’t let up, it’s like a bad dream. They say I got a troubled mind”_  
_“And if history repeats, well you know I got a troubled mind”_  
_“Are we a force of nature? Or just a sore in the mouth? Are we the beautiful future? I can’t figure it out”_

When Eli wakes up, it’s dark. He wonders if he’s truly awake at all. He can’t feel his limbs, he can’t remember anything. Suddenly, he realizes he’s cold. His body is stuff, but is able to move an arm and feel around, and realizes he’s in a small metal box, lying on a metal tray. He’s in a morgue, or something like it. Eli panics. When you can’t die, being buried alive becomes the ultimate nightmare. He feels around behind his head. There’s no knob, because why would there be, but the latch from the outer knob can be turned from the inside.

When he opens the door, he has to slide himself out on the tray, almost falling face first to the floor as he tries to climb off. It’s dark in the room, but light filters in and it’s a relief compared to the perfect pitch black of the sealed drawer. 

There’s only one small window in the room which is letting in the subtle moonlight. Eli can at least be thankful for the fact that it’s nighttime and that whoever put him here didn’t think he was enough of a threat to guard around the clock. 

Memories came rushing back so hard Eli’s knees buckled. He gripped a metal table to stop from collapsing completely. He remembered being tortured at EON, the pain still as vivid as when it happened. He remembered Victor, and fighting Marcella together. He remembered Dr. Haverty, in his last moments, stabbing him, blood everywhere and Eli not able to heal, even without keeping the weapon in place. 

He remembers dying.

He stands up and looks down at his body. He sees the scar left from the doctor’s killing blow. He also sees a long scar from his chest down to his belly button. Someone had cut him open. He shudders at the thought, but is thankful he was at least asleep. No, not asleep, he was dead. 

It had been different this time, coming back. He hadn’t gotten a scar since becoming an EO. He couldn’t. Only this time, there had been the serum, and he hadn’t healed in time. He’d died and apparently, due to the fact that he was in an empty room, no one was worried he’d come back. He shuddered, another memory coming back. Darkness. He remembered being dead. Something in his stomach twisted, filling him with nausea. 

He flees the building, only able to steal a lab coat to cover his naked body. It’s freezing outside and his feet are aching from walking on the cold pavement before long. It’s a rough night, but he steals clothes and a credit card to get a cheap motel for the night that doesn’t ask for ID. 

He doesn’t want to sleep, afraid he’ll slip back into darkness, but then thinks that might be welcoming. This life doesn’t feel right, he doesn’t feel the same as he did before dying. He sleeps and dreams about being cut open in a lab, strapped to a table. He wakes up in cold sweats. He takes a shower and leaves the motel, but not before asking for a current newspaper. Eli pretends to be interested in its content, but his eyes are fixated on the date as he leaves the motel. 

It’s been almost a year since he died. 

***  
Victor is walking back to his hotel room when he gets a notification on his phone. He checks it and sees that it’s about EON. He hasn’t talked to Mitch or Sydney since the night Eli died, but months after they had stopped calling and texting, an email popped up in one of Victor’s old email inboxes. It was from Mitch and it was only a link. It turned out to be a program created to intercept EON communications. Victor had to input his cell number to get them sent to his phone. He wondered if that was Mitch’s ulterior motive. Perhaps they had his number know, but they’ve never tried to reach him on it so far. Maybe they could track him, but Victor didn’t worry himself about it. Instead he caught up on EON news.

New management of course, what with the decommissioning of Stell. He also learned where they were keeping the bodies of dead EOs, including one that had infiltrated their staff and died getting Victor out. He wondered if perhaps he should pop by for a visit, take Dom’s body, have Sydney revive him. But that would mean seeing Sydney and he couldn’t risk that. On the other hand, maybe they were watching the notifications too. Maybe they would get Dom themselves. He didn’t know if Dom would even want to come back, but he did know that when Sydney brought people back, their bodies came back better than before, even if their EO powers were damaged. He thought, in Dom’s case at least, that wouldn’t be such a bad trade-off. But then he thought of his own trade-off and the serum he now takes to keep death at bay. 

EON wasn’t even guarding the facility, as they had deemed it an unnecessary use of resources to watch over a bunch of dead people. They had security systems set up to keep people from getting in, but they hadn’t put in any safety features to stop people from getting out. He knew Eli was being stored there, had read reports and updates on him. That he showed no signs of healing or possibility of resurrection. After months of Eli staying dead, Victor’s paranoia about it had finally started to ease.

Now he looks down at the notification on his phone, stopping in his tracks. A body is missing. Eli’s body. The building shows no signs of breaking and entering, and all evidence points to Eli just up and walking out. Victor feels a wave of sickness wash over him. Turns out he’d been right to be paranoid, and he feels like an idiot for having let his guard down at all. He let out a sigh of resignation. Deep down he knew Eli couldn’t or wouldn’t stay dead. He wonders how long it will be before Eli starts killing again. Maybe it was last night, maybe it will be today. Victor would need to find him first. 

***  
It’s not long before Eli starts to see an apparition of Victor once again. He may not be alone in a cell anymore, but he’s alone in this world. Trapped in a body that can’t die, no matter how badly he suddenly wishes he could. He doesn’t actually wonder where Victor is, because his version of Victor is right here with him, and he doesn’t want to know if Victor is dead. The thought makes him anxious and triggers thoughts of the whole world dead and burning around him while he continues to live on millennia into the future.

When he’s not panicking about living forever, he’s fantasizing about ways to kill himself. The apparition of Victor tells him how each way would fail and how he would survive. The serum is the only thing that ever brought Eli close to death and he has no idea where Dr. Haverty is or if he’s even still alive. 

Eli gets used to seeing Victor’s ghost, which is why he does a double take when Victor finally tracks him down. It’s on a dark street and Eli realizes Victor must have been following him for a while, waiting until they were alone with no witnesses around. Neither of them say anything, they just stand under the street lamp. Victor’s hand is readied at his side to make Eli crumple with a twitch of his fingers, but he stops. He watches Eli instead and Eli doesn’t do anything at all. He knows Victor can make him feel pain, but what he experienced in the lab was far worse than Victor had ever made him feel. 

He knows Victor is here to kill him or capture him somehow. Eli won’t let himself be captured, but if Victor wants to try and kill him, he might have some advice. 

Neither of them speak and there’s an odd look in Victor’s eyes. A considering look that Eli hasn’t seen since the first time they met. This Victor may be older than the one he’d imagined for so long, but there were some things that never changed. 

***  
Victor has a bad history of letting Eli go. Of course, it doesn’t help that Eli is, or at least was, unkillable. Victor tracking him down and cornering him would never end in Eli’s death. Victor knows this, yet he looks for him anyway. He knows he’s done this before, and that it didn’t go well. Yet, he can’t help but find Eli, not letting himself plan too far ahead. He truly doesn’t know what he’ll do, what he can do. 

When Victor does locate him, following a trail of small time robberies from people with very specific tastes. A trail of credit card thefts used at motels going the same direction. It took a bit of trial and error on Victor’s part but he finally found Eli. He follows him for a whole day and is surprised when Eli doesn’t do much at all, mostly stays in his motel room. At night, he follows Eli out and it seems like an aimless walk. Something about Eli has changed, Victor can already tell by the way he’s holding himself. Victor can’t imagine Eli as changed, he’s always been a constant, even before he became an un-aging EO. 

Victor’s curiosity gets the better of him and he follows Eli too close down a dark, empty street. Eli will notice him, and he does. Eli slowly turns around, looking unsurprised at first, then as if his vision was blurred, he scrunches his eyes, then opens them wide. 

Victor can see the change more evidently now. It’s in the set of Eli’s mouth, his slouch, his tired eyes. He no longer looks permanently smug. Instead of confident and cocky, he looks… sad. Lost. Haunted. It takes Victor aback. He wonders what Eli has gone through. Perhaps being dead for almost a year has done some damage that not even the torture he’d endured in the EON facility could have imparted.

Neither of them speak for a long while. Victor doesn’t know what to do with this Eli, but he’s intrigued. He’s always been intrigued when it comes to Eli. He doesn’t want to do anything to scare him off now. 

Finally Victor settles on, “I’m not going to kill you.”

“You couldn’t if you tried,” Eli responds. It’s the same response the old Eli would have given but the delivery is completely different. Where it once would have been boasting, it was now dejected. Depressingly so. 

“Well I’m not going to try,” Victor says.

Eli waits and considers. “Yeah, me neither.”

They stand in silence again. Victor even less sure what to do next. Each response from Eli surprising him more than the last.

“How about we get a drink,” Victor says eventually.


End file.
